These indigenous Irish technology companies increased their turnover by an average of 30% last year and many are now looking outside of Ireland for their main market, according to a survey by AIB.

The survey found that despite a strong multinational presence in Ireland, there is a scaling indigenous technology sector worth €2 billion in annual sales and employs 30,000 across the country.

AIB’s head of Technology, Media & Telecoms Banking John O’Dwyer said there is accelerator movement incorporating players like Wayra, NovaUCD, the NDRC and others are playing a considerable role in attracting talent from overseas which is vital for business owners trying to grow a business in the ICT sector.

In a report launched in Brussels by EU commission vice president Neele Kroes, the App Market in Europe has the ability to generate around 4.8 million jobs within the next 5 years. In 2013, we saw the app market generate 17.5 billion euro and this is expected to rise to 63 billion by 2018. With the app market rising, coding seems to be becoming a very important life skill.

Attending the launch of this report was peter Vesterbacka, CMO of Rovio, the developer of Angry Birds. Vesterbacka spoke on the challenges of developing a healthy “app economy” in Europe and declared Angry Birds to be the “biggest digital brand ever”. He also mentioned a scheme to teach children how to code with the “Angry Birds Playground” educational programme.

The EurApp report is based on a study conducted over the course of a year by the Inishgt Centre for Data Analytics and NUI Galway .The study was in association with Gigaom Research and was conducted by John Breslin.

Only 6 billion euro of the above revenue was actually generated from app sales, spending within the apps and advertisement. The bulk of the revenue, came from contract labour.

To give an insight of the earning power of apps, Flappy Bird, a game which was released to app stores briefly this month, generated 50,000 euro in revenue per day for advertisement.

“We all know there’s been a huge growth in apps but the actual revenue numbers in terms of jobs, app sales and contract development work are very encouraging,” – Vesterbacka

What is your opinion on the future of the app market? Let us know @4pm!

Amazon knows what you want. So well in fact, that they intend to start shipping before you even place your order. In December 2013, the Seattle-based retailer took out a patent on the idea of shipping out goods before an order has even been placed. Items will be shipped based on previous orders, viewing history and other factors.

The idea is to remove the fear of important deliveries arriving late due to being shipped from a distance, encouraging online shopping; specifically from Amazon whilst also discouraging them from visiting physical stores.

This new formula for predicting orders to be placed could significantly reduce delivery time and greatly increase customer satisfaction. In the patent document for this formula, Amazon speaks of the delay between buying and receiving an item online and how it “may dissuade customers from buying items from online merchants”. The patent implies that items could wait to be shipped from the shipper’s trucks or storage hubs.

The patent shows different ways of deciding which items to be shipped to where, using factors from your wish list and search history to your returns and even how long you hover your cursor over products you view. All this is in a direct effort to cut down on delivery needs and to become the leader in a growing trend among businesses; to identify and meet consumer needs before even the consumer themselves do.

Amazon have added next day delivery recently by expanding on their warehouse network and also, in 2013, announced that they would be using unmanned drones to ship out packages in order to decrease delivery time by taking small packages directly from warehouses to the consumer’s door. In the patent, Amazon create the idea of filling out partial addresses or ZIP Codes, and using this to keep the item closer to the potential purchaser, with the rest of the label being filled out in transit.

It is unclear whether or not this new delivery tactic has or will been deployed, as no further comment has been made, but what it does is it shows just one way which Amazon is willing to manipulate their vast knowledge of their customers in order to leap ahead of competition.

However, the algorithms is not without flaws and in times of error the patent states that customers may be given discounts, or even receive the package as a gift in order to build strong customer-client relationships.

What are your thoughts of Amazon’s latest efforts to stay ahead of the competition? Let us know @4pm

phone is set to be far more discernible than its predecessors. The upcoming Samsung Galaxy S5 is set to be visibly distinct from its S3 and S4 counter-parts, with its newer more stylish design to be the next generation forerunner for the Android Phone, with the possibility of it also including an iris scanner. It is set to ship in March or April, as said by the Korean company’s mobile-product leaders.

“Many people are fanatical about iris recognition technology… We are studying the possibility,” stated Young-hee Lee, executive vice president of marketing for Samsung mobile phone division, during an interview with Bloomberg news during the CES exhibition in Las Vegas. The iris scanner works by scanning different patterns in a person’s eye and would give Samsung a competitive edge against iPhone and HTC’s fingerprint technology. However, for the iris scanner to be plausible, it would need to be more than a gimmick or an accessory to avoid the same criticism given to HTC’s One Max phone’s fingerprint authenticator system.

Lee said that the S5 should look significantly different to its predecessors too. “When we moves to S4 to S3 it’s partly true that consumers couldn’t really feel much difference between the two products from the physical perspective, so the market wasn’t as big” she had told Bloomberg. “For the S5 we will go back to basics. Mostly it’s about display and the feel of the cover.”

The S5 is set for release in March or April, roughly a year after the launch of the S4. Simultaneously, a new successor to the “Gear” smartwatch is set to arrive, which will be less bulky and have much more advanced features, while the new Galaxy note, a larger smartphone which targets higher-end customers, is due for launch in the second half of 2014.

Lee also said Samsung will be placing a lot more work into its Tab line of tablets in 2014. At the CES exhibition, it introduced the large 12.2 inch Galaxy TabPro and Galaxy NotePro tablets. The NotePro includes a stylus, and both models will ship in the first quarter.

How do you feel about the Galaxy S5’s idea to add iris-scan technology to their smartphones? Let us know @4pm!